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Dinner

  • opened: 12/9/2003
  • closed: 4/3/2004
  • Wyndhams Theatre
  • Box Office: 020 7369 1736
  • Details:
  • Summary: Enjoyable if wafer-thin Moira Buffini comedy - with Harriet Walter excelling as the acid-tongued hostess Paige, presiding over the dinner party from hell. Visit theARCHIVE to hear a discussion. In Moira Buffini’s fast and furious comedy, reshaped since it was first seen at the National in the summer of 2002, Harriet Walter’s Paige presides over a dinner party held in honour of her husband’s latest philosophical book. What’s on the menu is as nauseating as it bizarre, ‘apocalypse of lobster’, primordial soup, and the badinage is equally emetic. Most of the critics have tucked in heartily to the play’s second helping, which has been served up seemingly as a tart antidote to seasonal goodcheer. The grumbles continue, however, that overall the ideas the play cooks up are rather lightweight. In The Daily Telegraph, Charles Spencer enthused: ‘Caught somewhere between social comedy and wild surrealism, the play is full of violent confrontations, bitchy one-liners, lethal character assassination and entertaining thefts from other plays. You could see the play as an attack on the moral emptiness of the middle classes, à la Buñuel. But I think you would be far wiser to view it as little more than good, poisonous fun, with a neat and disturbing twist at the end, which has been greatly improved since the play's first run.’ In The Times, Benedict Nightingale liked it, but not a lot: ‘Brilliant actress though Walter is, she just hasn’t the lines to convince us that Paige is much more than a Home Counties Cruella De Vil whose scarlet gown reflects bloody intentions within. Buffini isn’t into creating souls.’ In the Independent, Paul Taylor conceded: ‘It would be idle to pretend that the evening has a deep imaginative unity. Indeed, with its diverse flavours of Bunuel, Agatha Christie, Shakespeare, Priestley and Ayckbourn, Dinner is quite a freaky feat of fusion cuisine. But, as served up in Fiona Buffini's buoyant and glitteringly malicious production, it slips down a treat. In The Guardian, Lyn Guardian countered: ‘It could easily be all style and no substance were it not for Fiona Buffini's clever production, a dazzling central comic performance from Harriet Walter (a woman who has dressed to depress) and a real understanding of the despair that haunts the empty lives of the rich and successful.’ In the Financial Times, Alistair Macaulay argued: ‘Dinner feels slight. Cast above its weight, too. Harriet Walter delivers Paige with terrific froideur and venom, and Penny Downie is spellbinding as Wynne (vegetarian; former lesbian; who painted her husband's genitalia from memory and then exhibited the painting). But you want to see these two stylish actors in more rewarding material.’ In the Evening Standard, Nicholas de Jongh carped: ‘After a stranded van-driver calls and the atmosphere darkens, Dinner dwindles into repetitive rounds of Paige's malice. Miss Buffini has rewritten the finale and the new resolution makes her failure to explore the reasons for Paige's melodramatic, self-destructive revenge scheme and the couple's mutual hatred more glaring. Dinner is real fun but thematically and dramatically undeveloped.’ In the Sunday Telegraph, John Gross approved, but wondered: ‘Now and then, you can’t help wishing for something more.. Though she has tightened up the play since it was first seen at the Lyttelton last year, it still leaves a great deal unexplained in terms of character and motivation.’ In the Mail on Sunday, Georgina Brown suggested: ‘It still has the feel of a collation: Stoppard’s fogbound The Real Inspector Hound and Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Sprinkled with Orton’s disgusting bad taste and garnished with Ayckbourn’s insight and comic timing. But if, in the end, it’s less a feast than a dramatic dog’s dinner, it’s still frequently lethally funny.’
  • Author: Moira Buffini
  • Director: Fiona Buffini
  • Composer: n/a
  • Lyricist: n/aSet Designer: Rachel Blues
  • Lighting Designer: Mark Henderson
  • Costume Designer: n/a
  • Choreographer: n/a
  • Cast Details: Harriet Walter (Paige); Nicholas Farrell (Lars); Penny Downie (Wynne) Adrian Lukis (Hal); Flora Montgomery (Sian); Paul Kaye (Mike). Transferred to the West End from the RNT.